Microsoft's operating system (OS) development times are too
long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an
inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant
compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating
Microsoft
. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with
limited value, management costs that are too high, and new
releases that break too many apps and take too long to test and
adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions
into the office...well, it's just a heck of a sad story for
Microsoft.

Those arguments probably don't surprise you. (See
Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista? and
Vista Never Had Its Moment in 2007.) But
the Gartner analysts offered several more points to show how
Windows is in a whole new world of hurt. High on the list is
Windows' complexity, its lack of modularity, its hardware
footprint (particularly on low-end PCs) and the increasing
movement to Web-based and other OS-agnostic
applications.

A few of their arguments:

Mature markets have limited growth in terms of PC
hardware. The computer hardware business is expected
to grow only 2 percent to 8 percent between 2005 and 2011. The
opportunities for PCs are higher in emerging markets, where the
growth rate is 16 percent to 24 percent for PC hardware—but they're
more price-sensitive so vendors and enterprises have to keep
the price down. That means less memory and storage, for
example—and Vista is not appropriate for that sort of
memory model. Linux is the preferred OS on low-end PCs
including "one laptop per child" and certainly Microsoft
doesn't want to see that happen. "All these things are in
opposition to what we've seen with people expanding PC use year
after year," MacDonald said.

Version compatibility is relevant in more than
software development terms. For example, they said,
iPhone's version of OS X is closer to the desktop version of
the Mac OS than Windows Mobile is to Vista.

Servers are evolving in multiple and sometimes
conflicting directions. Some industry trends imply
that we need to scale up computing, such as single instance
data stores and partitioning. Others are driving it down, such
as grid and cloud computing, server farms and cluster
computing. The result, they believe, is that enterprises will
want to customize the OS based on the need.

Microsoft has taken some first steps in this regard, they
pointed out; for example, Windows Server 2008 can be
preconfigured based on roles. "That's a step in the right
direction, but it's still fairly superficial," said Silver.
What's needed is a radical change in architecture that goes
beyond packaging DLLs, he added.

The move to server-agnostic applications is still in
its infancy but will soon have a major effect on enterprise
computing. The legacy applications won't go away, even
if the exciting stuff is being done on Internet-based apps,
they said. But it won't stay that way. Today, 70 percent to 80 percent
of corporate applications require Windows to run, but the
Gartner analysts expect a tipping point in 2011, when the
majority of these applications will be OS-agnostic, such as Web
applications. "Sometime in the middle of the next decade,
Windows will be playing a much less important role on the
desktop," MacDonald said.

Virtualization changes our view of what operating
systems are. Virtualization starts offering levels of
abstraction between the OS and the hardware, pointed out the
analysts. The hypervisor is taking on some of the role of what
the OS did. "Is this the time to redraw some of these lines?"
asked Silver. "For us in IT, the interjection of these new
layers helps introduce fluidity, and lets us better manage
IT."

And Yet, Gartner Says: Don’t Skip Vista

All of these points don’t necessarily mean that your
enterprise should skip Windows Vista entirely. Although half
the Gartner clients they surveyed don't plan to begin Vista
migration until the second half of 2008 (the same clients who
represent 2.5 million PCs and, in 2006, confidently said they'd
get going with Vista in the second half of 2007 or the beginning of
2008). "We don't recommend skipping Vista," said MacDonald.
They do, however, suggest that enterprises adopt Vista by
attrition (such as when buying new computers that have it
preloaded). That's not because of Vista's virtues but, said
MacDonald, because Windows 7 is scheduled to be released in
2009 or 2010, and you don't want to wait until 2012 for
deployment.

The analysts recommended that in the short term, enterprises
assess the range of Windows OS types and instances in their
infrastructure and determine their company's own tipping point
for OS-agnostic applications. In the next year, they said, IT
managers should evaluate where various virtualization
technologies and OS-agnostic apps can provide early
advantages.

Should you consider other operating systems? (It's not an
unusual idea.)

MacDonald and Silver believe you should at least calculate
the cost of switching to another environment. Microsoft won't
change its message unless enterprises make it clear they'll
adopt technologies and strategies that serve its users best,
they said. Do proceed with Windows Vista deployments as you've
planned, though, as the earliest Microsoft could deliver
against the analysts' vision (if they wanted to) would be
2010.

What does Microsoft think of all this? MacDonald and Silver
said they've talked with Steve Ballmer about their analysis,
but 95% of Microsoft revenue comes from OEM shipments. Ballmer
"has billions at risk," Silver said. "I believe Microsoft will
pursue a path of slow, incremental change because that's safest
for their stockholders—unless you vote with your
dollars."